Operation Cornflake

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 10:26 pm

Interesting story about an operation the US pulled on my old boss, and the German people. Operation Cornflake

www.hgitner.com wrote:

These stamps were key part of a high level clandestine plan to undermine the morale of the average German citizen. The Allies felt that if many German people started receiving Anti-Nazi propaganda in their morning mail delivered punctually at breakfast time by the mailman, they would feel that their "German Empire" was falling apart from within.

THE REAL ONES ARE ON TOP, FORGERIES ON BOTTOM

How were these propaganda forgeries used?

The OSS decided that the best way to smuggle the mail into the regular German postal system was to bomb mail trains. In addition to bombs to possibly destroying the trains, they dropped sacks of mail containing Anti-Nazi propaganda. During the confusion of cleaning up the wreck, the false mail sacks were mixed with the damaged German mail. The OSS re-created all aspects of the German Postal system from real business return addresses to many thousands of names and addresses pulled from the telephone directories. They even replicated the mail bags, postal markings and every other detail of the postal system. Every letter was franked with a 12pf stamp or two 6pf stamps. On opening the letter, they would find it filled with anti-Nazi propaganda including the 12pf "Futsches Reich" stamp.

SOURCES | hgitner.com | psywarrior.com

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 6:34 pm

Never heard of this Operation before